


Seventh Time Lucky

by cookiegirl



Category: Suits (US TV)
Genre: Age Difference, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Academia, First Meetings, M/M, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-30
Updated: 2019-03-30
Packaged: 2019-12-26 15:18:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,912
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18284933
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cookiegirl/pseuds/cookiegirl
Summary: Harvard economics professor Harvey Specter has a new teaching assistant, and he's infuriating.





	Seventh Time Lucky

**Author's Note:**

  * For [asuralucier](https://archiveofourown.org/users/asuralucier/gifts).



> From a prompt by asuralucier. Hope you enjoy!

“Don’t forget, your new TA starts today,” Donna called after Harvey as he headed out of his office. He groaned and half-turned in the doorway. 

“Tell me this one’s better than the last five,” he said. 

“The last six,” Donna corrected him. “Mike Ross will be your seventh this semester. And I think you’ll like him.”

“You thought I’d like the last one.”

“You _did_ like the last one. Right up until he spilled his Red Bull on your suit. Mister Ross is under my strict instructions not to bring any sort of beverage into your classes.”

Harvey rolled his eyes. “He better have more to offer than being beverage-free.”

Donna smiled. “Trust me. And try not to fire this one on the first day.”

\---

Harvey steeled himself before entering the classroom, mentally running through the six previous deficient TAs. Josh, who had managed to mess up the complex task of photocopying the syllabus; Becky, who had turned up late the first two days and was told not to bother turning up at all on the third; Andrew, who didn’t like baseball ( _who the hell doesn’t like baseball?_ ); Josh number two, who couldn’t get a simple coffee order right; some kid whose name Harvey didn’t bother to learn and who left in tears after Harvey snapped at him during his second class; and Bryan, with the Red Bull. For such a prestigious university, Harvard sure had a large supply of incompetent douches.

He pushed open the door, and found himself looking at the kid who was presumably his new assistant - and had evidently made himself very much at home already. He was sitting at the front of the otherwise empty classroom, in Harvey’s chair - in _Harvey’s chair_ \- with his feet up on the desk and a book in his lap. He was dressed in worn blue jeans and a red hoodie, and his hair looked like it hadn’t seen either gel or a comb in years. 

Harvey grit his teeth, stalked forward and dropped his briefcase on the desk with a loud bang.

“You’re in my seat.”

The kid jolted up, the book falling from his lap as he removed his feet from the desk. Harvey tried to be thankful for the small mercy that his Converse hadn’t left a trail of mud on the walnut veneer. 

“Professor,” the guy said in greeting, holding out a hand for Harvey to shake. Harvey looked at it dubiously, wondering where it had been, but he wasn’t feeling quite mean enough to ignore it. He gripped it, and found it warm and surprisingly strong.

“You're Ross, I presume?” Harvey said, nudging the fallen book towards him with his foot.

“Mike Ross,” the kid confirmed, bending down to pick up the book from the floor and glancing up at Harvey as he did so. His eyes were sharp, curious and a rather striking shade of green. “I thought you knew that?”

Harvey raised an eyebrow. “Are you famous, Mister Ross?”

Mike straightened and tossed the book onto the desk. “You've called on me in class. You've used my name.”

Harvey huffed out a vaguely amused laugh. “I don't learn anyone's name. Part of the TA job is to feed me the names from the seating chart when I need to call on someone.” 

Mike smirked. “Oh, so it'll be my job to make you look like you've got a good memory?”

“It'll be your job to make it look like I give a damn what my students are called,” Harvey said. He never used to bother, but the dean had requested he show a little more care towards his students, and pretending he could remember their names was his one concession.

“I'll keep that in mind,” Mike said drily, and Harvey looked at him closely. He did look a little familiar, but Harvey didn’t think he'd been in class more than three times this semester. Not that it made any difference to Harvey whether a student turned up or not; if the kid wanted to throw away hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of education, he could feel free. The only thing that mattered was whether Mike could be a decent TA.

“At least you managed to be here on time,” Harvey said, opening his briefcase and taking out the notes for the afternoon’s lecture. “Which puts you ahead of at least two of my previous TAs. But you might have used the time you were waiting for me to go over the course material rather than reading -” he glanced again at Mike’s book, and was surprised to see it was a well-worn copy of _The Colour of Magic_. He didn’t run into many other Terry Pratchett fans in the economics world.

“I already know the course material,” Mike said. “The whole semester’s worth.”

Harvey barely restrained himself from rolling his eyes. He didn’t mind the sort of confidence that verged on arrogance - liked it, even - but misplaced confidence was another thing entirely, and there was no way this kid actually knew all the course material.

“Oh yeah? Then why don’t you talk me through Kernel Density Estimation while we await your classmates?” Harvey sat down in his chair, folded his arms and waited for the kid to stumble his way through an attempt at explaining a term they hadn’t yet covered in class or in the assigned reading. 

“KDE is a non-parametric way to estimate the probability density function of a random variable,” Mike said smoothly. “Next?”

Harvey narrowed his eyes. “Gaussian Discriminant Analysis?” he said, and then was forced to try his best to look unimpressed when Mike reeled off not only an explanation of the method but also several ways in which it could be used.

“So this is why you barely attend my classes, huh? You think you already know it all?” He expected Mike to look a little cowed by the revelation that Harvey was aware he’d been skipping lectures, but Mike's face lit up instead.

“You _do_ know me,” he said triumphantly. 

"Only in the sense that I vaguely remember seeing you slumped in a chair, looking bleary-eyed, attending about a tenth of the classes you're supposed to," Harvey said. 

Mike shrugged. "I have a good - an _exceptional_ memory. I read every textbook you assigned, understood them, remembered them. Seemed like classes were sorta optional after that. Don't worry - I'll ace my finals."

Harvey felt his lips thinning. The kid's memory might be impressive - intriguingly impressive - but it didn't stop Harvey wanting to reach out and shake him. If he was that capable, he should be making the most of his potential - he should be excelling in Harvey's class, making sure Harvey knew his name. "Believe it or not," Harvey said, "not everything you need to know is in the textbooks. You know there were a lot of rejected applicants for this course who would have given their right arm to hear someone with my business experience lecture?"

Mike had the good grace to duck his head slightly and his eyes slid away from Harvey. "Yeah, but I thought -"

He was cut off by the sound of the door opening, and the first group of students began to enter the hall. Harvey handed Mike the seating plan and then stood, determined to give a lecture so good the kid would regret missing a single one.

\---

Harvey hadn't been able to stop himself from glancing over at Mike once or twice during his lecture to see if he was paying attention, though he wasn't sure why he was bothered. He had at least been gratified each time to see that Mike was watching him carefully, or at least doing a good impression of it. Now, as the rest of the students filed out of the class, Harvey turned to Mike and raised an eyebrow.

"Better than the textbook?" he said, barely even making it a question. He knew it had been outstanding.

Mike grinned and cocked his head slightly to the side. "It was definitely more interesting to watch," he said, and Harvey blinked. 

"Glad I could justify you taking the time out of your busy schedule," he replied, trying to ignore the fact that he felt like he was being hit on. Which he obviously wasn't, because there was no way a student would hit on him. And no way he would be interested if they did. Except - No. Definitely not.

"Well, I'm getting paid fifteen dollars an hour for this TA gig, so there's that too," Mike said, and Harvey shook his head.

"How about we go for a bite, discuss what I'll be expecting of you?" he suggested, before he'd really thought about it. He hadn't taken any of his other TAs for food, but then, Donna _had_ told him to give this one more of a chance. That was all he was doing.

"Sure," said Mike. "Wait. Are you paying?"

\---

The quaint coffee shop wasn't Harvey's usual scene, but he'd realized on route to his usual bar that Mike wouldn't be welcome dressed as he was, so he had veered off course and now found himself sitting at a tiny table in the corner of the cafe, with his new teaching assistant inches away from him. The table was so small their coffee cups were touching and their muffins had to share one plate. Harvey could smell Mike's cheap aftershave, and underneath it, something else - something surprisingly fresh and light, like grass after rain, that was presumably just Mike.

Harvey ran through Mike's duties while their coffee cooled, and was pleased to find that Mike listened carefully and, after Harvey was done, even suggested a few extra ways he could make Harvey's life easier. It wasn't quite what Harvey had expected, and he began to realize that underneath the bravado, the kid really needed the job and was eager to please - sweet, even. From a couple offhand comments, Harvey had deduced that his scholarship money wasn't going quite as far as he'd hoped. He suspected part of that was down to the boy spending it on alcohol or weed, and he swiftly decided he would put a stop to that. He obviously needed someone to sort him out.

"So, you think you can handle all of that?" Harvey said as he finished his last sip of coffee. He didn't actually need to check; Mike was smarter than his previous six TAs put together, and Harvey was sure he could handle anything he threw at him.

Mike grinned - and hell, that grin was going to undo Harvey in time, he could tell. "I think I'll enjoy handling whatever you want me to," Mike said, and Harvey couldn't stop himself grinning back. 

\---

“How did it go?” Donna asked as soon as Harvey stepped back into his office.

“My lecture? It was flawless, as usual. I’m surprised you have to ask.”

“I meant," Donna said, slowly and precisely, "how did it go with your new TA?”

Harvey paused. How could he best put Mike Ross into words? He ran through a few potential descriptions of how the afternoon had gone in his mind, and decided he couldn't say any of them. He shrugged, and said: “He didn’t spill anything on me.”

And dammit, it seemed like even that was too much to tell Donna, because she grinned triumphantly, like she could see straight through him, and wasn't even trying to hide it.

“Well, then," she said. "Sounds like a match.”


End file.
